This year, I have finally take the leap directly into Peter Greenaway’s career, and exploring his films have been a truly rewarding experience. There is nary a friend, relative or co-worker that has not been on the receiving end of my adoration-fueled lamentations of Drowning by Numbers, a film that changed my perspective on literature in quite a significant way, with its playful complexities being almost revolutionary. The next logical step was to go back to a film I remember encountering years ago but couldn’t muster up the courage to actually watch, mainly because of how relentlessly strange it seemed. A Zed & Two Noughts is something incredibly special, a dark and twisted exploration of philosophical themes made by someone who is an artist in every sense of the word. I won’t lay claim to understanding anything about this film, as it is often a confoundingly strange oddity, but it all adds up to the inherent brilliance of this terrific little film that is as delightful as it is perverse. Perhaps not eliciting the same visceral reaction Drowning by Numbers did, I still found A Zed & Two Noughts to be quite an extraordinary piece, and provides evidence for my sneaking suspicion that Peter Greenaway is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever position himself behind a camera.

A Zed & Two Noughts is about Oswald and Oliver Deuce (Brian and Eric Deacon), twin brothers who both work as zoologists at the local zoo. In the opening scenes of the film, both of their respective wives are killed in a tragic accident when the car, being driven by the mysterious Alba Bewick (Andréa Ferréol), crashes into a swan, causing the death of the two passengers, but allowing the driver to survive, albeit resulting in her having her leg amputated. The twins’ reaction to their shared loss is profoundly sinister and complex, with both brothers needing to process the demise of their wives by becoming obsessed with the concept of decay, filming various entities – foods, animals and then humans – rotting away, deteriorating into nothing to come to terms with their own mortality. Both brothers also grow quite attached to Alba, who is an enigmatic individual who often eludes clarity and coherency in her endeavour to be as aloof to the brothers as possibly, who clearly show their odd attraction to the woman throughout their encounters, with their relationship only growing in intensity as the film progresses, often challenging the concept of decency. The simple zoo hides many secrets, with deception and betrayal being found skulking around, particularly from the malicious Van Hoyten (Joss Ackland).

Greenaway is such a strange individual, but he is the true embodiment of the precise cinematic idiosyncrasy that allures me. A Zed & Two Noughts is his quintessential work, a surrealist opera about human connections and the fragility of existence. An intricate character study of a set of individuals who are not particularly realistic, but made compelling through their humanistic interpretation by the actors, who have the gargantuan task of balancing the absurdity of the storyline with characters that are supposed to fit into Greenaway’s strange world vision, rather than define it. Eric and Brian Deacon are exceptional as the two leads, playing twins who, at the outset, cannot stand to be around one another, but gradually devolve into being quite literally inseparable in the face of tragedy, finding each other through their shared grief and gradually growing closer. Andréa Ferréol is deceptively charming as the object of their affections, the mysterious Alba, who appears to be almost otherworldly, with her actions and sentiments suggesting some philosophical underpinnings occurring within this character, a mystery that remains unsolved. She is persistently elusive throughout the film, yet much like the two leads, the audience cannot help fall victim to her alluring charms, which are emphasized by Ferréol through her beguiling performance, her embodiment of the seductively strange Alba. Joss Ackland has a small, but pivotal, role as an authority at the zoo who seems to have some vendetta against the brothers, with his sadistic disregard for the wellbeing of his inhabitants being in stark contrast to the natural curiosity of Oliver and Oswald. A Zed & Two Noughts is not a film that relies too heavily on the performances, because they would be fascinating just by virtue of occurring in this film, but the dedication from the cast did substantially assist in the captivating nature of this film.

The reason why Greenaway fascinates me so much is probably due to the fact that he can’t merely be classified as a “film director”, and is something far more profound and almost impossible to categorize. Many writers and cinephiles like to refer to well-composed films to be so beautifully-shot, they could be paintings (one just needs to recall the adage “every frame is a painting”) – but Greenaway seems to be one of the few directors who quite literally embodies this quality, imbuing his films with artistic influence taken directly from the fine arts. A Zed & Two Noughts appears to be a film composed of living paintings, with Greenaway’s first collaboration with cinematographer Sacha Vierney yielding utterly stunning results. Much of this film is derived from the paintings of Vermeer (with the iconic painter serving to be a central element of the plot, or rather his works are), and with every scene, the events are composed to resemble the work of the artist. Greenaway is a filmmaker who adores patterns, symmetry and order (a consistent trait throughout all his works, it would seem), and it is starkly evident throughout A Zed & Two Noughts, with each individual frame being meticulously-composed with great detail to extend far beyond simply being visual accompaniment to the story, but the opposite: the story sometimes feels it only exists to motivate Greenaway and Vierny to construct these gorgeous images, with their idiosyncratic, unique visual style being so distinctive and fascinating, to look away even for a brief moment seems not only unfortunate but criminal.

Of course, to suggest that A Zed & Two Noughts contains a story that is anything close to being inconsequential or dismissable is dreadfully incorrect, because Greenaway isn’t only a marvellous visual composer, he’s also one of the most rambunctious, unique storytellers I have yet to encounter, with A Zed & Two Noughts telling a tale that demonstrates the unique playfulness Greenaway has come to be associated with. Perhaps not as fascinating on a postmodern level as Drowning by Numbers (a delightfully complex film, which intricacies were just begging to be dissected and investigated), A Zed & Two Noughts has its own deceptive charms, particularly in regards to tackling the most daunting of all subjects: death. This film, as many have mentioned before, is a meditation on mortality. Greenaway presents us with a twisted and perverse tale that is ultimately only about the temporality of life, and how we only exist for a brief period of time. We, like everything else in this world, will be subject to decay, which is horrifying and bleak but somehow repurposed to be a profoundly beautiful concept in the context of this film. A Zed & Two Noughts contains multiple instances of animals visually decaying on screen, but this technique, which hints towards themes much bigger than those that can be captured adequately by any film.

You have to admire Greenaway’s audacity in the making of A Zed & Two Noughts – how else can one justify the making of this film? Greenaway’s intentions are not immediately clear, but when you start to realize that A Zed & Two Noughts is a rumination on the concept of mortality, it might not make much sense, but it becomes profoundly moving. A Zed & Two Noughts is not a particularly easy film – it is often convoluted and has seemingly-unnecessary diversions into scenes that appear to be nothing more than non-sequiturs or red herrings to the grander plot. A Zed & Two Noughts is a dark comedy for those who dabble in existential crises, a film noir for those who like grisly, visceral corporeality blended with a deliriously-poignant amount of absurdist fantasy. There is something about this film that could only be described as magical – darkly comic, fantastical and otherworldly. However, unlike many other films of this ilk, A Zed & Two Noughts lacks sentimentality, with the only emotions being cold, sterile despair and a few instances of macabre humour that keep the hopelessness at bay while we are temporarily distracted by Greenaway’s ode to death and decay. It is a potently cerebral film, one that requires the utmost attention and emotional engagement with the story. Beneath this film lurks a perversely fascinating lamentation on our own existence, or rather our inevitable ceasing to exist, and to be perfectly honest, if you don’t come out of this film with the heightened paranoia and bleak outlook that we will all eventually face our own demise, and be subject to the same horrifying decay represented here in the poetic stop-motion rotting scenes, then you’re watching this film wrong.

A Zed & Two Noughts is a terrific film. I mentioned it before, but Peter Greenaway is an inspiring figure, and being able to explore his filmography is such an exhaustingly wonderful experience. A Zed & Two Noughts may not have inspired the ardent adoration and childlike wonder I felt with Drowning by Numbers, but it elicited other equally-strong reactions from me, such as whimpering despair and grandiose fearfulness. It is a true oddity of a film, a visually-striking piece that draws the audience in, seducing us with its unique imagery, all the while we assimilate the complex, arid thematic content that makes this such an unforgettable experience. Greenaway is a masterful artist, and while he is certainly far from being the representative of populist cinematic desire. I suspect that Greenaway’s relative mainstream obscurity is a result of films like A Zed & Two Noughts, which can alienate entire groups as easily as it can inspire others. However, when you take this film for what it is, and what it intends to say, it is difficult to see it as anything less than a meaningful bundle of complexities, all commenting on very serious issues through darkly comedic absurdity and unsettling surrealism. There is no one that can make films quite like Peter Greenaway, and as films like A Zed & Two Noughts suggest, no one should even try. Truly one of the great cinematic iconoclasts of his time, and a historically-significant artist in his own right, as evident by the unhinged genius of A Zed & Two Noughts.